The Centro de Láseres Pulsados is a key Spanish User facility founded by the Ministry of Science, the region of Castilla y León and the University of Salamanca; it is included in the strategic Roadmap of Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructures (ICTS) in Spain and its main mission is to promote scientific and technological development by offering national and international user access.
The Uniqueneess of CLPU is the multi Terawatt laser system VEGA, composed by three independent and synchronised 30 fs long Ti:Sa based laser pulses of 1 PW (VEGA-3), 200 TW (VEGA-2) and 20 TW (VEGA-1) working at a repetition rate up to 10 Hz.
The VEGA-2 laser system has been successfully commissioned in 2016-2017 in two different configurations respectively for electron and proton. The first two calls for user have been run in 2018-2020 with several international recognised research teams. The PW laser (VEGA-3) is now fully operative, and commissioning experiments has been concluded in February 2021. A new call for users has been issued offering both VEGA-2 and VEGA-3, and VEGA-2-based secondary sources (electrons, protons and X-rays)
The combination of laser intensity short duration and repetition rate offered by VEGA pave the way for new existing experiments but also represent a scientific and technological challenge for what concern Targetry and Diagnostic techniques.
Here a first report on the scientific activities of the last years at CLPU is presented focused on:
- The first commissioning campaign on VEGA-2 and on VEGA-3
- The first two use access campaigns
- The scientific program for targetry and diagnostic development @ HRR
